Facebook Setting That is Eating up Your Data Usage

Have you noticed an increase in the amount of videos shown in your Facebook news feed? I have.

Facebook has recently put a lot of emphasis on video. This is a quote from Facebook’s newsroom:

Growth in video views exceeded 50%from May through July of this year, and since June there has been an average of more than 1 billion video views on Facebook every day. Video on Facebook was built to be mobile first, and now more than 65% of video views are on mobile. And we’re just getting started.

I personally enjoy the increase in videos on my newsfeed. The auto-play feature is especially convenient because it allows me to quickly glance at a video’s intro to decide if I want to invest another minute of watching (that’s my attention span).

But there’s a problem…

The auto-play feature is eating up my cell-phone data plan, and it’s starting to burn a hole in my wallet.

Here’s how you can disable the auto-play feature on your mobile device, or change it so it only activates when you have a Wi-fi connection.

Disabling Auto-Play on an iPhone

Open up your iPhone, and select “Settings”.

Scroll down until you see “Facebook”, and click on it.

Press the “Settings” button.

Press the “Auto-play” button.

Select which setting you’d like. I set mine up for Wi-fi only.

Disabling Auto-Play on an Android

Android users need to simply log into the Facebook app, and go to app settings. Click on “Video Auto-play”. From here you’ll be able to turn off, or change auto-play to only happen when you’re connected to Wi-fi.

Additional Tips For Saving Data

If you’re still looking for ways to use less data then you might consider these tips:

Go to each of your apps and change their settings to only sync with wifi.